The yakuza are merciless predators who are motivated by profit. They have oppressed, ruined, and destroyed countless people's lives in their insatiable quest to make money. If you believe there is a benevolent side to them as portrayed in rubbish like Gokusen, My Boss My Hero and Ninkyo Helper or the romanticized genre of ninkyo eiga, then you are just fooling yourself.
One should not be impressed or swayed by the amount of aid the yakuza has given as a result of the devastation inflicted upon the people living in Japan. No matter how many recipients of yakuza largesse there are, there are and will be many more who are victims of yakuza greed. And you can bet that, as Japan undergoes the trials and tribulations of this current crisis, the yakuza are finding a way to profit from this disaster.
Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Posts: 46182 Location: Los Skandolous, California Country:
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:52 am Post subject:
shin2 wrote:
The yakuza are merciless predators who are motivated by profit. They have oppressed, ruined, and destroyed countless people's lives in their insatiable quest to make money. If you believe there is a benevolent side to them as portrayed in rubbish like Gokusen, My Boss My Hero and Ninkyo Helper or the romanticized genre of ninkyo eiga, then you are just fooling yourself.
One should not be impressed or swayed by the amount of aid the yakuza has given as a result of the devastation inflicted upon the people living in Japan. No matter how many recipients of yakuza largesse there are, there are and will be many more who are victims of yakuza greed. And you can bet that, as Japan undergoes the trials and tribulations of this current crisis, the yakuza are finding a way to profit from this disaster.
I agree, if anything this is largely a PR move.
The concept of Ninkyodo is fiction, in the same way the romanticized vision in The Godfather portrays the Italian mafia.
However, as a counterpoint perhaps, famed journalist Jake Adelstein, with some nuance, expounds on the subject (of the yakuza) in this recent article.
Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Posts: 159 Location: france or japan Country:
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:56 am Post subject:
To this day, the best work on the subject is "Yakuza" by David Kaplan and Alec Dubro. Yakuza are violent gansters but they have a code of honour unlike hedgefunds or stock brokers.
Last edited by 20 century boy on Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:36 pm; edited 1 time in total
Note: This is shared by Anne, from Sendai, Japan where she has lived for the past decade teaching English. Very moving!!
Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,
First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.
Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.
During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."
Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on.
But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.
There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun.
People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.
Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.
And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.
They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.
Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.
Jake Adelstein probably knows the yakuza as well as any gaijin. For years he was a crime beat reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun (the first foreigner to be a full-time reporter for that newspaper); then later, he became an investigative journalist during which time he had plenty of contact with the yakuza.
At one point the yakuza threatened harm to him and his family, necessitating their leaving Japan. Later, he discovered that an informant of his--an Ukranian woman who worked as a hostess in a yakuza-run club--was raped, tortured, mutilated, and then killed by the yakuza for being an informant. Adelstein eventually returned to Japan when the oyabun who had threatened him and about whom he had written an expose got "religion" and denounced his previous criminal life.
If you read the article, Adelstein is careful to point out that, in spite of their relief efforts both currently and in the past, the yakuza still remain "bad guys" and that even "bad guys" can occasionally do something good.
Yakuza are violent gansters but they have a code of honour unless hedgefunds or stock brokers.
Their "code of honour" does not prevent them from incessantly preying on anyone--from the very young to the very old--in order to make money, using any means necessary and without any sense of humanity.
Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Posts: 46182 Location: Los Skandolous, California Country:
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:01 am Post subject:
shin2 wrote:
If you read the article, Adelstein is careful to point out that, in spite of their relief efforts both currently and in the past, the yakuza still remain "bad guys" and that even "bad guys" can occasionally do something good.
I didn't think there was any doubt of that. He's merely trying to convey that as with anybody, they aren't completely one-dimensional actors in Japanese society.
From reading Wiki, if you eat a banana, you're subjecting yourself to 0.0001 mSv (millisieverts) of radiation.
Wiki:
Nearly all foods are slightly radioactive. All food sources combined expose a person to around 0.4 mSv per year on average, or more than 10% of the total dose from all natural and man-made sources.[9]
Some other foods that have above-average levels are potatoes, kidney beans, nuts, and sunflower seeds.
A radiation dose equivalent of 100 ��Sv (100 microsieverts) increases an average adult human's risk of death by about one micromort – the same risk as eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, or of smoking 1.4 cigarettes.
Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Posts: 159 Location: france or japan Country:
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:40 pm Post subject:
and let's not talk about the chemical on it. I heard that fruits from New Zealand and Australia are (slightly) irradiated before shipping to Europe because they have a long journey and it prevents them from rotting.
From reading Wiki, if you eat a banana, you're subjecting yourself to 0.0001 mSv (millisieverts) of radiation.
Wiki:
Nearly all foods are slightly radioactive. All food sources combined expose a person to around 0.4 mSv per year on average, or more than 10% of the total dose from all natural and man-made sources.[9]
Some other foods that have above-average levels are potatoes, kidney beans, nuts, and sunflower seeds.
A radiation dose equivalent of 100 ��Sv (100 microsieverts) increases an average adult human's risk of death by about one micromort – the same risk as eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter, or of smoking 1.4 cigarettes.
40 tablespoons of peanut butter, that sounds like a ton, but I do like peanut butter but not that much! lol, i honestly didn't know that peanut butter hand radioactivity.
Any foods that are anti-radioactive or neutralize the effect of radioactivity?
40 tablespoons of peanut butter, that sounds like a ton, but I do like peanut butter but not that much! lol, i honestly didn't know that peanut butter hand radioactivity.
I don't think Wiki was saying they're radioactive... I think it was saying that 100 microsieverts of radiation is as dangerous as 40 tablespoons of peanut butter or smoking 1.4 cigarettes... In other words, not very dangerous.
Quote:
Any foods that are anti-radioactive or neutralize the effect of radioactivity?
I suppose iodized salt, since people in China were buying up the stuff like crazy.
Joined: 15 Jun 2004 Posts: 46182 Location: Los Skandolous, California Country:
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:08 am Post subject:
"One upscale Japanese restaurant in Taiwan is not taking any risks. An eatery called Peony in Taipei's business and financial district is offering a radiation gauge to its diners, Reuters reported.
"I can give my customers a promise: If you eat at Peony I guarantee that everything you get will be the safest and the best," manager Catherine Yang told Reuters."
"One upscale Japanese restaurant in Taiwan is not taking any risks. An eatery called Peony in Taipei's business and financial district is offering a radiation gauge to its diners, Reuters reported.
"I can give my customers a promise: If you eat at Peony I guarantee that everything you get will be the safest and the best," manager Catherine Yang told Reuters."
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